Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google • Hacker News Board

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#231

Post by kenjackson » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

telltruth wrote: post #151

timnit-drama wrote: post #15

The email she posted [1] makes it pretty clear that she sent an email with some demands/conditions (separate from the one "to Brain women and allies") and said that she would resign if they weren't met. Google said they wouldn't agree to them, accepted her threatened resignation, and told her it was effective immediately. Without knowing more context, it sounds like she tried to do some hardball negotiating by threat…

As I understand, she first sent out mass email to large group of employees that outright violated Google's policy. This act alone was sufficient for immediate termination. However, she then tried to bargain with her manager. Her manager basically let her know that bargaining was irrelevant and her action was serious enough that she is being terminated immediately. Then she comes back and tells the story with twist th…

The email has been posted in full and it sounds like it was to a standard mailing list. Nothing in the email sounds like something you would be fired over. But Google seems really sensitive these days.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#232

Post by IvyMike » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

IvyMike wrote: post #32

wishysgb wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She posted the email.

Can you post a link? I can't find it. (I see email from her manager to Timnit, but not the original email from Timnit to the mailing list)

Update with leaked email: https://www.platformer.news/p/the-withering-email-that-got-a...

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#233

Post by berdario » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

describe24 wrote: post #201

berdario wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Redacted, since I don't want to fuel speculation] It always was (also) about race/gender! That said, I don't know Timnit, and I don't know her specific circumstances... I believe that Google is full of people who wants to solve these problems, but somehow leadership fails to capitalize on that. It might only be a few bad apples in the leadership, but each one wields a huge amount of power (hiring and firing people).…

She was in a position of privilege to hire people. Did she hire any black women or men to help with the lack of diversity she refers to?

That's mostly true, and I'm not aware of which specific hiring efforts she was involved with...

The VP that fired her/"accepted resignation" wrote to her reports about it:

https://mobile.twitter.com/alexhanna/status/1334348137616568...

It's frustrating to realize, but unsurprising: the people higher up in the hierarchy will always have more power than those below.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#234

Post by berdario » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 6:59 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #208

ramblerman wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> diversity OKRs These really exist? How do you know when you've reached perfect diversity? I'm honestly curious. Is it based on population distributions? What would be an example diversity OKR

Typically they're numeric diversity hiring goals, something like "40% of our new hires should be women" or "10% of our new hires should be black". You sometimes see more recruiting-targeted ones (like Gitlab's pledge that 95% of its reachouts would be to underrepresented groups), or less numeric things like efforts to build employee affinity groups.

I haven't paid attention to those (after all, I'm not in the position to positively influence them much), but another example are attrition metrics:

https://www.blog.google/perspectives/melonie-parker/how-rete...

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#235

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

berdario wrote: post #234

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typically they're numeric diversity hiring goals, something like "40% of our new hires should be women" or "10% of our new hires should be black". You sometimes see more recruiting-targeted ones (like Gitlab's pledge that 95% of its reachouts would be to underrepresented groups), or less numeric things like efforts to build employee affinity groups.

I haven't paid attention to those (after all, I'm not in the position to positively influence them much), but another example are attrition metrics: https://www.blog.google/perspectives/melonie-parker/how-rete...

Oh, I'd never heard this before, but that's a pretty neat idea. Thanks for the link.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#236

Post by kenjackson » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #140

jonathankoren wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we even know what her demands were? I haven’t seen them posted anywhere. That said, it’s not behooven on either party to be transparent — to the public, or even other employees — because that’s just lawsuit bait. All we know is that she gave a hardball ultimatum, and Google accepted option 2. I don’t know enough about what’s going on, but if you say “Do this, or I quit,” you have to be prepared for them to show yo…

Some third hand hearsay mention: > In the letter she criticised the use of pre trained language models in Google's products (e.g., BERT is now used for most searches, machine translation, etc.). Apparently, the two conditions she mentioned concern how Google goes forward in deploying these models despite the warning of (their own) AI ethics researchers about biases that are manifested in these models.

That seems like its not only reasonable, but what her job was. Now if she said, "Do this or I quit" then that is on her. But if she criticized them harshly then that seems completely appropriate.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#237

Post by nbzso » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

The Verge published article:) I wonder why there is no comment section in it. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/3/22150355/google-fires-tim... Seriously I am not American and don't work for American companies. Politicisation of companies for me is dangerous path, in my humble view meritocracy is in core of successful enterprise. This "woke" thing creates more inequality from this perspective. But I am just another cog in the system, so please give me a direction of thoughts on this subject. I am with open mind, where I am wrong in this?

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#238

Post by describe24 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

berdario wrote: post #233

describe24 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She was in a position of privilege to hire people. Did she hire any black women or men to help with the lack of diversity she refers to?

That's mostly true, and I'm not aware of which specific hiring efforts she was involved with... The VP that fired her/"accepted resignation" wrote to her reports about it: https://mobile.twitter.com/alexhanna/status/1334348137616568... It's frustrating to realize, but unsurprising: the people higher up in the hierarchy will always have more power than those below.

I actually find it quite unethical and potentially rather manipulative to share with your future employees that you fought tooth and nail for them. Essentially implying that they wouldn't be there if it weren't for you and immediately setting it up so that they feel indebted to you... it's chilling to see that tweet tbh

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#239

Post by kenjackson » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

nbzso wrote: post #237

The Verge published article:) I wonder why there is no comment section in it. https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/3/22150355/google-fires-tim... Seriously I am not American and don't work for American companies. Politicisation of companies for me is dangerous path, in my humble view meritocracy is in core of successful enterprise. This "woke" thing creates more inequality from this perspective. But I am just another cog…

I think that as an ethicist in the field of race and AI there's really no way to escape politicization. If you identify bias in a company centered around race (note, not using the term racism, as I think often the bias isn't intentional), its hard to take action w/o politics coming into play almost immediately.

Re: Ethical AI researcher Timnit Gebru fired from Google

#240

Post by whoknew1122 » Thu, Dec 03, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #220

skywhopper wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t understand how trans people might have specific things in common to talk about that non-trans people don’t relate to? These groups aren’t just for political hot topics, but also for parents or for musicians or runners or any other affinity group.

I can surely understand how that can be the case. I just don't see why that would be specifically relevant to generally working on Google Brain.

I can't speak for Google Brain specifically, or AI/ML (I do InfoSec). Perhaps there is a need for discussing the Google Brain project specifically from a woman's point of view.

But when I hear about a 'Google Brain Women and Allies' distro, I'm more thinking about peers which discuss things which impact them. I wouldn't get too hung up about the 'Google Brain' portion of the distro; it's likely just a way to self-select a group of peers which share a common interest.